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Thoughts on Rogan and Redemption

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I wanted to put out some thoughts about the Joe Rogan racism controversy. A video surfaced recently of Joe using the n-word multiple times over the years on his show and elsewhere.

Joe has come out and apologized, saying he used to think it was ok for anyone to use the word, but now he thinks differently, and that the video looked bad even to him. He went on to say that he’s not used the epithet in years, and that he was very sorry.

I’ve not dug into it deeply, but my first impression having watched a lot of Joe Rogan in the past is that the guy is obviously not racist—at least as the person he is now and probably has been for like a decade or so. I judge this by the number of diverse friends he seems to have in his life and his relationship with people like Dave Chapelle. When he sits with his many diverse friends riffing on comedy and life for hours at a time, the love between them feels impossible to fake.

I think people can change. I think Joe is from Philadelphia, and I think he’s from a background where racism is normal and accepted. He also grew up in the early 80’s. In my mind those all add up to him likely being racist, or at least acting racist, in his past somewhere. And I doubt he’d disagree with that.

But people can change, and it seems clear to me that Joe is way different now than he was in the past. He’s largely a hippie at this point in the sense of giving love to people. He loves hearing about people’s stories. Lifting people up. This is what his show started as, and if you look at his guest list it’s pretty damn diverse. Those are his people. His friends. And his colleagues in his world of comedy and MMA.

The point of all this is to say that the 80’s was a different world when it came to racism. Hell, the early 2000’s were a different world compared to now. A massive portion of people reading these words has used epithets in the past, either out of hatred or to be funny, and in a way that would destroy their careers if it were public.

We have to start judging people for who they are today, not for who they were in the past. This is especially true since our culture has evolved so quickly in the last 10 years—forcing people to see the flaws in their previous behavior. We must give people the ability to evolve away from their previous selves and into a more open, loving, and considerate person.

There are disavowed white supremacists walking around today spreading love towards the people they hurt. We should reward and encourage that rather than discard or ridicule it because of who they used to be.

There are, of course, people who are faking their apologies, and those types should obviously not be forgiven. But thankfully I think it’s pretty easy for most people, and to the Wisdom of Crowds as a whole, to see the difference.

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It’s ok to hold someone responsible, and to demand a full apology from someone who’s been horrible in the past. Growing up in the 80’s, or around other hateful people, can be listed as valid explanations but never as excuses.

But when someone does fully come around, sees how messed up they were, and truly apologizes and changes their ways—we have to embrace them as examples, not clobber them with their previous selves. We must, as a society, give flawed people a path to redeem themselves. Not for Weinstein. Not for Spacey. Not for people who have done too much harm or are unable to change. But in most cases—for most people.

It’s time for the second phase of cancel culture. The first phase was a much-needed purge. I’m glad it happened, and we need to be ready to do it again if necessary. It refreshed us tremendously and upgraded our standard for acceptable behavior. There’s a name for cringing at movies from the 80’s and 90’s—it’s called progress.

But if the first phase was The Purge, this second phase needs to be The Redemption. It’s time to reclaim those who have actually felt the shame, honestly apologized, and done the hard work of improving themselves.

We should absolutely celebrate perfect people who have never felt hatred or been a shitty person when they were young. But maybe those people weren’t perfect at all. Maybe they were just lucky to have non-racist parents and friends.

I’d argue we need to celebrate even more those who weren’t so lucky. The people who grew up in a racist neighborhood with racist friends and family, and who—despite all that—found a way to realize it was wrong and change their behavior.

Let’s make that the second gift of cancel culture. Like the presence of new flowers after removing the weeds.

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Published on February 06, 2022 04:12

The Irony of InfoSec’s Reaction to Crypto, NFTs, and Web3

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There’s something strange about how our InfoSec community is reacting to cryptocurrency, NFTs, and Web3.

Mostly, it’s quite negative. And not dispassionate negative either—but a negativity soaked in ridicule and hate.

This is very curious coming from a community that includes so many hackers.

I think this comes from the dual nature of hackers themselves. On one hand, hackers are super open-minded and curious. They find everything interesting and can’t wait to learn about new things.

On the other hand, they’re also anti-establishment and anti-hype. Or at least, mainstream hype. Kind of like people who only like underground bands until they get popular. While it’s underground they’ll hype it all day, but once too many people like it they go find something else.

And that’s definitely happening with crypto and NFTs and Web3. Everyone’s talking about it. Everyone’s launching a coin, an NFT, or talking about how Web3 will solve all the problems. So I suppose it’s natural for hacker types to throw rotten fruit from afar.

But it still seems strange. I feel like the opposing force of curiosity and exploration should be strong enough to counteract that tendency.

We’re the security people. We should be walking the minefield before everyone else—to try to make it safer for the normies. We should be curious about it. We should be experimenting with it.

Hackers are simultaneously curious and skeptical, which is a great mix.

It might be total shite—at least some parts of it. And there’s definitely too much unhealthy hype around it. But that doesn’t mean the whole thing is rubbish.

If there’s even a moderate chance that decentralized computing, shared ownership of organizations, and digital validation of ownership will take off—which I think is a matter of when and not if—I think hackers should be fascinated by that. Like, holy shit, we could very well be in the BBS days of a new type of internet.

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And some hacker types definitely get it. Not everyone has gone negative on this stuff. I know lots of people who have been messing with crypto and NFTs and such. But guess what? Many of them are quiet about it because they don’t want to be ridiculed by their fellow InfoSec people.

It’s bad when hackers have to keep their curiosity about a new thing a secret from their own tribe.

We can do better.

All this stuff going on—putting aside the hype—could end up being a new substrate for everything, just like the internet in the 90’s. Or maybe not. Maybe it’s too early. Or maybe this tech won’t get us there. Or maybe it’s all crap. Who knows.

And I want to be very clear: it’s ok to find problems in things. It’s ok to warn people if you see danger. It’s ok to have a negative opinion about something. Obviously.

What I’m talking about is default hate towards anything new and strange. Like Cloud for instance. And now Crypto. Maybe they’ll work out, maybe they won’t.

But as security people—with the hacker spirit in many of us—I feel like we should be more curious and optimistic, and less prone to attack new things just because they’re strange.

It’s fine to warn, caution, and criticize. That’s part of our DNA too. But we should do our best to maintain a backdrop of optimism and curiosity when we do so, especially when looking at something with the potential to shape our future.

NotesFeb 2, 2022 — I did some slight softening of the post to make it more clear that I think criticism is fine, and even needed, but that I just don’t want us to lose the openness and curiosity aspects that make our culture so great.Moxie’s article on NFTs was an interesting example in that he didn’t completely bash the whole enterprise. He advised caution, and he did so after actually playing with the tech himself. A fellow security professional reminded me that this is similar to how security viewed the move to Cloud as well. And then all these years later nobody even notices anymore.Image from a Coindesk article by Annie Zhang.

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Published on February 02, 2022 07:24

The Irony of InfoSec’s Reaction to Crytpo, NFTs, and Web3